NOTEWORTHY

Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 adaptation of the William Makepeace Thackeray novel is praised, often in breathless terms, for its exquisite style: painterly compositions of nattily dressed royalty engaging in revelry and deception, often bathed only in candlelight. But such descriptions make “Barry Lyndon” sound like cinematic vegetable consumption; this is a frisky, wry, darkly funny story about a real scoundrel and his road to redemption, featuring an entertaining performance by (a slightly miscast) Ryan O’Neal and some of Kubrick’s most delightfully subversive writing and directing, priming the viewer for the shocks and jolts of its closing scenes. — Jason Bailey